Quick Gameplay Thoughts: July 11
Hi folks,
Usual Disclaimers
These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get put delayed or even stopped. If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler
Gold funneling
We're aiming to have a nerf to mid/jungle gold funneling in 8.14. It's an issue we've been looking at for a little while now, given it creates lanes without much interaction and putting two income streams on one champion produces a range of balance issues. We haven't been able to find a fix that's low enough on collateral damage to regular jungle play, low enough on disruption for a regular patch and that meets our design values, especially on things like intuitiveness and clarity.
We're at the point though where we don't think we should let the issue persist while we continue to work on those constraints. We'll be going with a temporary solution as a result that's pretty ugly on the intuitiveness/clarity side, with the intention of replacing it come preseason when it's more appropriate to make larger changes. That temporary solution is heavily reduced gold from lane minions if you have a T1 or T2 jungle item and have the most gold on your team.
We're targeting gold on the champ being funneled to here because that's where the biggest discrepancy lies, with that champ having around 50% more gold at the 15 minute mark than the opposing mid laner. We also took a look at solutions that involved hitting XP instead, difference there's much smaller most of the time though (~10%). We considered nerfs to the support items too, to hit the other side of the equation, but conclusion was that wouldn't actually address the issue, given how impactful the gold lead on the champ funneled to would still be regardless. A penalty to lane gold when ahead by contrast is, despite being rather ugly and heavy handed, targeted directly at both funneling and the resource (gold) that's causing the problems. From internal testing so far affect on junglers who aren't funneling's been very small to non existent.
Nerfing Conqueror
We're planning on nerfing Conqueror somewhat. That probably happens in 8.15, though there's a slim change it slips into 8.14 still depending on how work this week goes. Details at time of writing still to be determined. One of our primary goals though is to get tanks back into a more appropriate spot, with things having swung too hard against them. Doing so initially by looking at systemic things like Conqueror that affect all of them, before getting into individual champion changes.
Runes selection UI
Not sure yet exactly when, but at some point after the cursor changes are out we'll be doing some work on the runes selection UI. At a minimum that will involve looking at which rune gets replaced when you're trying to change your secondaries. Might also do some work on things like color coding of rune trees, not sure yet. Possible it takes a while to happen, given we've got a few other projects also on the team doing that stuff, definitely planning to do so though.
Non LoL: Game Design Links
For anyone interested in discussions around game design and development processes the site below's worth a read. Covers some useful topics in pretty clear and concise way. Linked pages are the ones that particularly leapt out to me, many of the other sections are good too though:
Iterative approach: https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-4-dot-0-science-of-design?module_item_id=44537
Prototyping: https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-5-dot-1-prototyping?module_item_id=44546
Decision Making: https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-6-dot-1-tips-on-decision-making
Different kinds of fun: https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-7-dot-0-kinds-of-fun?module_item_id=44563
Different types of player: https://learn.canvas.net/courses/3/pages/level-7-dot-3-player-types?module_item_id=44566
http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/6.24.1/img/champion/Ziggs.png
& 
& 
) if that champ has a dedicated group of players who really love them. One of my friends stopped playing because he loved Galio, and the new Galio simply WASN'T Galio anymore. Also, poor gbay99.
is a pretty strong pick right now even after his recent nerf on E i think you guys are looking into more changes in order to balance him so i have a sugestion: How about add scalings into his kit and reduce his base dmg? I mean,Mundo builds full tank because is the best option since he can't really use an offensive item like his juggernaut brothers like Darius so he ends in a pretty tough spot in terms of itemization because his only scaling is laughable and it's not going to be relevant unless you somehow manage to get like 1000AP. My idea is basically make Mundo a proper juggernaut and make him build atleast one offensive option in order to keep his dmg relevant instead of smacking people to death with base dmg while also being unkilliable because you build full tank. I suggest ap scalings in order to make Mundo more unique,you know? We have a lot of ad juggernauts but only 
is an proper ap juggernaut so i think Mundo can join him and build things like Liandry(i'm pretty sure liandry was one of his recommended itens for a while :P ) or any other Ap + Health item.
nerfs and the intentions there? The base E damage seems to only target his early game where he is already weak. With keeping the same AD ratios on his Q/E, he'll still be able to 1 shot just as quickly around 2 items. Wukong doesn't play as a lane bully in most matchups, so I'm curious why the decision to nerf him there as opposed to possibly landing him in the middle ground on his prior Q buff? 30% rather than 50% scaling I mean.
and NEVER upgrade it. I get a 
and rush a 
. From there, I get more lethality. I eventually sell the Talisman. As such, this change will be directly penalizing me if I snowball for the entire game until end build when I sell my talisman.
